Four Principles for Learning Sheng Zhen Meditation

By Mike Kornely

It was a while ago, probably the spring of 2004, Li Jing came to visit the Peaceable Dragon Community.

If you don’t recognize the name, Li Jing is Master Li’s illustrious daughter, now also a principal teacher of Sheng Zhen.  Even twenty plus years ago she had deep learning across many lineages of Taiji, Bagua and Wushu. She had won gold and silver medals in World competitions. And in addition to all that, she is a very nice and generous person. There are indeed countless other things you could say about her, but for our purposes today, I believe the main thing is there isn’t anyone who understands both the inside and outside of Sheng Zhen Meditation more than her, other than, of course, her father, Master Li.

One evening at the Accotink Church, Jing presented what she described as four principles for learning what we now call Sheng Zhen Meditation. Her talk hit home with me. l summarized it and made a little card for my students that you see above. Her guidance was simple and direct. Relax: be happy, Coordinate: mind, body, breath, Practice: every day, Do the movements with your Heart. For almost any experienced practitioner of an internal art, this guidance, in these or other words, are often already a feature of one’s practice — so basic so as not to need explanation. Though in her presentation, she elaborated on them and gave them a distinct meaning.

Two of the principles are instructional and clear: Relax, (be happy) and Practice (everyday). The other two are simple statements but hold a deeper challenge.  Coordinate body mind and breath. Do the movements with heart.

The starting Principle — Relax: Be Happy. Jing started with this — not just an important suggestion, but a foundation and essential quality. If we are to get anywhere, to understand anything about Sheng Zhen, begin with this. She meant of course to relax the body. There is a vast toolkit of ways to relax. So, no need to dwell on that.  Essentially, we try to remove any tension from our body and calm our mind as well. But of equal or greater importance was an attitude or a feeling. In Chinese one of the main meanings of relaxing is to release, loosen, to let go. We enter a different quality of mind — a quality that is first cousin to the feeling of being on vacation. Our daily concerns and tasks are released, our body loosens, feeling spacious and open. Our various knots of the mind and heart loosen. The validation of the sense of relaxation was a feeling of happiness or contentedness that emerges from the inside. It reminds us of one of Teacher Li’s most often-given instructions as he looks over a class. “Smile”. 

Jing’s second principle was to Coordinate: mind, body and breath. Coordinate in the sense of harmonizing body, mind and breath. For the body itself, this means letting it move as a whole, letting the inbreath and the outbreath be in unity with the major movement of the body. Yoking the mind to breath and body. It strikes me as notable that Jing talks about this goal of harmonizing body mind and breath as following relaxing. A loose relaxed body and mind empty of distraction is a prerequisite. In many ways, we sense the degree of relaxation by how unified the movement of the body is.  We all know that any tension in the body, say the lower back or right shoulder, will block any kind of ability to move the body in harmony. We also know that lack of mental relaxation, a distracted mind or sour mood can make movement weirdly disjointed. And we also know that there is no way to fool either the mind or the body (or really to de-link them). They are going to be what they are. The slings and arrows of daily life will surely land and some will stay. Built in tensions and persistent attitude of mind make for muscle, mental and emotional knots. They are the price of admission. The goal of harmonizing is something we need to treat with great generosity. Nonetheless, the goals of Relaxing enough to smile from the inside and being able to unify the body in movement are worth holding on to, but they do suggest adhering to the third principle is no doubt a good idea.

Practice, Every Day.  Simple enough. And we all know from our own experience what the results are when we follow this guidance. Or don’t. The usual analogy of the effect of a regular practice is that it is like stacking up paper one sheet at a time. At first it doesn’t seem like much is happening but after a while there are meaningful results. We appreciate the aptness of this comparison, but possibly it does not do justice to meaning of each practice. Each practice can be a jewel.

And finally, Do the Movement with your Heart. Jing demonstrated this by asking us to see the difference between a movement done beautifully — all the physical attributes just so, as someone of her abilities could only do — but with no emphasis on the feeling of the movement. Then she did the same movement, this time with heart, with feeling or an openness to feeling, engaging her whole spirit. It is always possible to do any movement in a mechanical way. But in some ways, it is almost impossible. Each movement embodies a feeling. Quite literally, emotion (e-motion) means, out of motion.  Teacher Li calls this flavor. We have an experience with the movement. We taste it. We can savor it. With a Sheng Zhen movement, all we really need to do is allow the feeling of the movement to emerge. Li Jing demonstrated this principle to the group by doing the movement Boat Rowing in two differing ways. That evening she asked us if we saw the difference between the two. It was subtle, but after a few demonstrations we could see the difference. There was a change in the fluidity, the grace of the movement, the degree of relaxation that showed up in the physicality.

She finally offered an explanation of how she did the movement differently. First in a precise way, but a strictly ”physical” way. Then in an open-hearted way, enjoying the movement with a smile in her heart and on her face.

Back then, the principles seemed like individual instructions to learn Sheng Zhen. As a novice teacher they seemed well worth sharing with my students. But as I consider them now, her maxims start to shine in a different light. If I were making the card today, I would make it into a four-piece interlocking jigsaw puzzle. There seems to be a unity, a common core to them.

Quite possibly there are several ways to glimpse this unity. One might be: What I have always liked about Sheng Zhen is that it is a Practice. And what we practice (hopefully) sticks to our ribs as the saying goes. The practice is of relaxing, loosening and opening the body, and mind. The heart knows enough to follow. Coordination happens naturally with practice. Contentedness seeps in, a smile emerges from the inside.  Li Jing’s guidance is to acknowledge the feeling, do the movement from that feeling, from your heart.

If anyone would like a pdf with the above illustration in a 3x5 card format, feel free to email me, mkornely@gmail.com